Time for reconciliation in Turkey

There is no doubt that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has played a most significant role in transforming Turkey for the last 15 years and after last Sunday elections has the potential to lead the country for at least five and possibly 10 more years.

During the last 15 years, Turkey has been transformed away from being a third world country, with long years of economic growth, improved public services, robust infrastructure and above all Islamisation of the Turkish population away from a Turkish nationalist secular entity.

Although Mr Erdogan deserves to be credited for the transformation of Turkey for the better, there has been grass root support for this progress from a number of educational movements, political parties and civil society amongst the Turkish people.

Credit must also be given for this long road to success of the emergence of new Turkey to the groundwork laid by pioneers like Mr Necmettin Erbakan of Milli Gorus and Mr Fethullah Gulen of the Hizmet movement.

Success brings power and power corrupts.

Amongst accusation of corruption and heavy-handed use of power, polarisation started between Mr Erdogan and his grass root traditional supporters from 2013 onwards leading to purges within Mr Erdogan’s party and especially with those aligned with the Hizmet movement.

After the July 2016 coup attempt, that was blamed on Mr Gulen,in a communist style purge, tens of thousands of people, in any way associated with the Hizmet movement, be in military, police, judiciary, education, media and even charity work were sacked from their jobs, many of them put behind bars and remain so till today.

This was highly unjust.

By all means, those military personnel involved with the failed coup must be tried and punished strictly according to the law but witch-hunting anyone associated with a civil society movement serving the people who surely had no idea of the coup should not be persecuted.

Even those people inspired by Mr Gulen working outside of Turkey in educational and charitable fields with great reputation locally including Australia have been targeted and defamed as a terrorist.

This is highly unfair.

Now that Mr Erdogan has won the election and consolidated his power, he should be large-hearted and as he has claimed that this is a victory of all 81 million Turkish people, he should work towards bringing all Turkish people together and work for a well united Turkey.

This is the only way Turkey can take up the leadership of the Muslim world and bring it out of its misery of division, wars and suffering amongst Muslim refugees. Turkey only has the potential to do this.

Mr Erdogan should take a lesson from his friends like Dr Mahathir Mohammad and Mr Anwar Ibrahim, old friends, then adversaries, who reconciled in order to serve their country and were victorious.

It’s time that Mr Erdogan reconciled with Mr Gulen and the Hizmet movement for the higher purpose of serving the Ummah.